One out of every three U.S. corporations are considering—or have already instituted—hiring freezes or downsizing to their workforces, according to a survey of 400 mostly large, publicly traded U.S. and Canadian organizations released Thursday, March 13, by business consultancy Mercer. Just 17 percent of Canadian companies said they’re considering similar cost-cutting actions. That compares with only 6 percent of U.S. companies that are planning to expand their workforces.

Surprisingly, just 15 percent of U.S. companies said that they had made changes to their 2008 compensation budgets in anticipation of a further slowdown in the economy since devising them in the fourth quarter of 2007. And despite the deteriorating conditions for many industries and companies because of the housing-related credit crunch, only 16 percent of U.S. survey respondents said they were considering compensation budget reductions in the near future, compared with 9 percent of Canadian respondents.

“What we’re seeing is that companies took into consideration when they did their budgets late last year that growth in the U.S. in particular would be harder in 2008 than in 2007, and are therefore being very conservative in their expense budgets,” said Susan Haberman, North American information products solutions leader at Mercer. “It’s not so much a case of companies looking to cut staff at the moment, but more that companies are not necessarily going to be looking for as much proactive hiring.”

Haberman said one of the biggest challenges facing CFOs and human resource managers in this uncertain environment will be maintaining and growing their top executive talent. Indeed, more than 40 percent of U.S. and Canadian companies said they are considering or are already implementing new or enhanced variable pay programs—plans that provide some or all of an employee’s compensation based on meeting performance targets.

“There are shortages of talent out there that companies have to balance with the economic-downturn concerns,” she said. “Many companies can’t afford to have all of their skilled workforce walk out the door because there’s nobody to replace them. Companies have to be more selective and diligent in determining compensation budget cuts.”

Filed by Jeff Nash of Financial Week, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.